Boards of this description can be serially produced by forming a continuous web, consisting of the filamentary material impregnated by the binder, on the periphery of a rotating drum and cutting this web into rectangular sections constituting the mats that are to be compacted in a press with relatively reciprocable lower and upper platens. As described in commonly owned application Ser. No. 381,435 filed by one of us, Harald Kober, on 23 July 1973, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,914,079, the mats may be compacted as rapidly as they are produced by the use of a perforated high-speed conveyor enabling the application of suction to the undersides of the mats on their way to the press and during the compacting operation so that the position of the mats relative to the conveyor and therefore to the press platens is positively maintained. This obviates the need for jointly compacting a stack of such mats which involves additional operating steps and also results in nonuniform processing.
In conventional systems in which the mats are compressed in a stack, they are trimmed to size after being removed from the press and separated. This requires the provision of a special trimming station downstream of the press.